I've always thought that war between the US and Germany was not a high probability outcome in World War II. As I understand it, a sizable majority of Americans had no desire to repeat the 'mistake' of 1917 and were in favor of concentrating on the war with Japan. And in fact, Germany actually declared war on the US. So that path really might not have happened.

In any of the several entire war scenarios, would it be possible to stop US entry into the war with something as simple as killing an event or two? And if more complicated than that, how?

Americans by and large were not at the center of the decision to enter World War II - until Pearl Harbor. There's at least some evidence to suggest that the top levels of government/military let Pearl Harbor happen. And if we choose to not go that route, there are the large corporate interests at stake. Looking at the US presidential elections of 1940 - there were no candidates on the Republican side that would not have found a way to get us involved in WW2, openly or covertly. I'm cynical in these respects, obviously...

Deterring America from participating (though we were helping England directly and I think Germany indirectly, if just on a corporate sharing level) would at the very least involve no Japanese action at Pearl Harbor or the Philippines, and Japan avoiding serious provocation of England. U-boat attacks in the Atlantic would need to be reigned in, and likely there would not have been an Afrika Korps. A major propaganda campaign in 1940 letting England know that Germany's interest was retaliation against France for its 1923 incursion would have been needed.

It would have taken an active effort by the Axis leadership in both theaters to convince England (and the US by extension) that it had no real issue with them. I'm not sure that would have worked either, but add a few corporate deals, tech swaps, and oil deals, very early on to cement a relationship. Either way, we do have Hess flying to England in 1941 before Barbarossa and the details of that have never been released, the circumstances of his "suicide" in prison as an old man "suspicious", and all that - who knows.

I'm just starting Pat Buchanan's The Unnecessary War and have Irving's bio of Churchill on the list. Buchanan starts with a convincing argument that had Britain chosen Germany as it's continental partner in the late 19th/early 20th century and had the British Army staff not entered into secret commitments with the French Army staff, there might have been a rather short Austro-German vs Russian war in 1914, if it had even got started. Not that the Kaiser was making things easier what with his hideously expensive toy navy. Had the navy been kept at the level of coastal defense plus domination of the Baltic, the German Army would have been noticeably stronger, and Britain not threatened.

There is a book somewhere in the Amazon wish list that makes the point that war in 1914 was actually a rather low probability event that occurred due to incredible bad luck and policy choices.

Hence my interest in being able to say, no US you will not be entering the war via hopefully a few easy changes in the TOAW editor.

Possibly. It depends upon the scenario. Personally, I can't think of any "entire war" scenarios that are worth editing - if by that you mean ETO + PTO.

To clarify, I was thinking of only the ETO.

As to any being worthwhile, I'm too much of a newbie to TOAW to know, though I do note that Rugged Defense shows some such scenarios with as many as 972 downloads; though, of course, that is a variation on the argument that millions of flies can't be wrong regarding cuisine. Still, I'd think there wouldn't be so many downloads if a scenario was a total stinker.

Wondering, how about if I go into the editor and remove every reference to the US in Events and Forces, would that make the US just disappear without being likely to mess up anything?

Possibly. It depends upon the scenario. Personally, I can't think of any "entire war" scenarios that are worth editing - if by that you mean ETO + PTO.

To clarify, I was thinking of only the ETO.

As to any being worthwhile, I'm too much of a newbie to TOAW to know, though I do note that Rugged Defense shows some such scenarios with as many as 972 downloads; though, of course, that is a variation on the argument that millions of flies can't be wrong regarding cuisine. Still, I'd think there wouldn't be so many downloads if a scenario was a total stinker.

Wondering, how about if I go into the editor and remove every reference to the US in Events and Forces, would that make the US just disappear without being likely to mess up anything?

Akmatov,

There is no answer to that question. It all depends on which scenario you want to mod. Making sense of the event editor on some of these is not a job I would give to a novice. By all means experiment though. Just remember - make a copy of the original and mod the copy. If you mess up something you will always have the original to fall back on.

Possibly. It depends upon the scenario. Personally, I can't think of any "entire war" scenarios that are worth editing - if by that you mean ETO + PTO.

To clarify, I was thinking of only the ETO.

As to any being worthwhile, I'm too much of a newbie to TOAW to know, though I do note that Rugged Defense shows some such scenarios with as many as 972 downloads; though, of course, that is a variation on the argument that millions of flies can't be wrong regarding cuisine. Still, I'd think there wouldn't be so many downloads if a scenario was a total stinker.

Wondering, how about if I go into the editor and remove every reference to the US in Events and Forces, would that make the US just disappear without being likely to mess up anything?

If you're going to read Irving, I suggest -- at a minimum -- that you balance him with a more orthodox author. Manchester wrote an excellent biography of Churchill, for example.

Irving has some real axes to grind -- and he's an extremely convincing writer. I once read his book on his year in Austrian jail. It was amusing -- he really managed to make Austria sound like a totalitarian police state.

But be forewarned: if you want to be brainwashed, Irving can do the job for you.

As to how the US could have wound up not entering the war, I suggest President Long winning the election in 1940 -- which he was figuring on doing when he got shot and killed in 1936.

This can happen either via Roosevelt having been killed in that attempt that was made on his life or via Long just managing to live to execute his strategy to set up a 1940 run against what would have then been a 'third term-ite.'

In fact, Long doesn't even need to win for our purposes. He can just force Roosevelt into making some really iron-clad isolationist guarantees to beat back Long's populist, presumably completely domestically oriented challenge.

No aggressive 'sub war' in the Atlantic and no heavy aid to Britain and Hitler's presumably less convinced that American entry into the war is inevitable anyway. He may not declare war on the US. Even if Japan does hit Pearl Harbor, we may have a worse-prepared America fighting a war in the Pacific only.

Wondering, how about if I go into the editor and remove every reference to the US in Events and Forces, would that make the US just disappear without being likely to mess up anything?

I wouldn't risk screwing up the events.

If you want to do it the quick 'n dirty way, I'd try just all the US formations in 'garrison' (or whatever it is) deployment and see what happens. Of course, you are going to get sky-high replacement levels for the surviving Allied forces -- at least for any common equipment types. But then, depending on how badly designed the scenario was in the first place, that might not be so bad.